I didn't want to necro the Star Citizen thread, but I was wondering if anyone knew where to get a copy of Freelancer... I'm probably going to be heavily involved with Star Citizen, but a friend of my said to check out Freelancer (even with the dated graphics)...

Freelancer is a fantastic game, definitely recommended. It also demonstrates that Roberts can deliver the goods even when things aren't going his way...a lot of his anti-publisher rhetoric stems from getting shafted big time by Microsoft when making Freelancer. Do be aware that like most old games the public multiplayer functionality no longer works though lan/hamachi should be fine and it's possible a community group has an unofficial patch or three. The idea of single player, private and public servers all rolled up into one comes straight from FL.

It would be nice if MS community-released this game like they did Mechwarrior 4. Been meaning to write them about it but it's effort and I'm lazy.

Perfectly playable as much as any space sim with a mouse. It's basically an FPS with full 3-D range of motion and an accellerator. There's too many buttons for any sensible joystick anyway, so even if you have a joystick with 20+ easy buttons to reach, you'll still be reaching across to your keyboard occasionally for squad commands.

yogibbear wrote:Perfectly playable as much as any space sim with a mouse. It's basically an FPS with full 3-D range of motion and an accellerator. There's too many buttons for any sensible joystick anyway, so even if you have a joystick with 20+ easy buttons to reach, you'll still be reaching across to your keyboard occasionally for squad commands.

Cool. It's too late for me to care anyway sadly, but I did love Freelancer.

Ships.. no. Cool looking prototype weapons from wrecks could be found. But you needed a Titan (i Think that was the name) to use them.I found exploring very fun in Freelancer, back then. I doubt the game could excite me now though.

The backbone of modern industrial society is, and for the foreseeable future will be, the use of electrical Power.

That Freelancer felt unfinished is a very valid complaint, because it indeed was an unfinished game. All the fundamentals were there and it does hold its own, but it wasn't built out enough to be the masterpiece it could have been. The tl, dr is that when the developer was bought by Microsoft they were told they'd get lots of money and support to make Mr. Wing Commander's opus magnum but once the sale went through the MBA squad showed up and things went downhill fast.

Still, it rates as my second favorite space sim behind X3 and gives a lot of conficence that no matter what happens with SC, it won't crash and burn like some other high profile auteur/vanity games.